A multilayer ceramic capacitor is a chip-type condenser mounted on the printed circuit boards of a variety of electronic products such as image display devices, including liquid crystal displays (LCDs), plasma display panels (PDPs), and the like, computers, smartphones, mobile phones, and the like, serving to charge or discharge electricity.
Such a multilayer ceramic capacitor may be used as a component of various electronic devices as it is relatively small in size, able to secure high capacitance, and is convenient to install. As electronic devices such as computers and mobile devices are becoming increasingly miniaturized and increased in power, there has been increased demand for a multilayer ceramic capacitor having a compact size and high capacitance.
Further, as there has been increasing interest in vehicle components in related industries, multilayer ceramic capacitors are increasingly required to have high reliability and high strength characteristics in order to be used in vehicles or infotainment systems.
As the number of layers being laminated increases, more step portions may be formed due to differences in thickness between internal electrodes and dielectric layers. Such step portions may cause undesirable bending of end portions of the electrodes when the dielectric layers are laterally elongated during a densification process of compressing a body.
In particular, end portions of the internal electrodes may bend to fill the step portions, and margin portions, serving to eliminate empty spaces formed by the step portions as covers may be depressed and margin widths decreased. As the empty spaces formed by the step portions are eliminated, capacitance layers may be elongated to an extent to which the margin width is reduced. Due to such structurally irregular elongations inside the internal electrodes, reliability of a multilayer ceramic capacitor, such as withstand voltage properties, may degrade.